


Magnetic Fields

by Kaylock



Series: Oops! I'm falling for Wally West. [6]
Category: DC Animated Universe, DCU, DCU (Comics), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Nerds talking science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-09 11:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14715192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaylock/pseuds/Kaylock
Summary: A couple of words can mean too much, we have to learn to respond reasonably to them, but for our main character that may not be as easy while her boyfriend keeps repeating them. For Wally the words came easy, if asked to explain them he might begin to rant for hours; he is heartbroken that it might not be the same for her.Set after the events of "Oops spoilers", can be read as a stand-alone but there might be pretty small references that will not be understood.





	1. Stuck on you

“Ok, so each point on this graphic represents a star.” Wally explained pointing at the graphic on Victoria’s monitor “Black points are normal stars. Blue and red points represent blue straggler stars belonging to two clear sequences. The blue solid and blue dashed lines are theoretical model predictions. The left sequence is composed of blue straggler stars formed roughly at the same time.”

“…Could you repeat the last three-quarters of that?” Victoria asked sheepishly, but with a knowing grin Wally just chuckled and began his explanation again, in all honesty? She only had to ask again because she got distracted by the color of his hair.

Victoria had always liked stars, but she wanted to have some more knowledge on astrophysics, after all, now she had the chance to learn much faster than a regular person, she liked to take advantage of that.

Besides, it turned out Wally had a hidden love for the subject, or well, not really hidden, but it just wasn’t a subject he had mentioned as much. Now, having Wally as her tutor for a subject he was so interested in had made both of them closer and happier, it was a total win situation.

“…expelled within several million years, star clusters had long been thought ‘infertile’ stellar systems that can’t form any new stars…”

Well, it would be more of a win situation if she didn’t have to catch herself every once in a while from getting distracted on her boyfriend’s voice instead of what exactly he was trying to tell her.

Not that he was a bad teacher, no way, it was effortless to understand what he meant, but she’d get lost on her own daydreams whenever she’d see him getting excited over things like this.

“…When the very core of clusters collapse under the gravity of all the stars in the small volume of space, the cluster becomes extremely dense, and many stellar collisions can happen in the core region, and then a whole lot of straggler stars get produced from it” He finished looking at her with a grin.

When Victoria raised her hand from over her desk to ask him a question he smiled, feeling confident about answering whatever question she might have, so he nodded for her to ask away.

“So, how do magnetic fields play into this?” She asked innocently.

Wally glared at her “Fuck off; I don’t know.”

She laughed at his answer, over the last couple of days she had realized magnetic fields were pretty much the bane of their existence for astrophysicists. Wally was trying to look at her with the best frown he could muster.

His expression didn’t last long, a smile soon found its way to his lips as he stared at his girlfriend being so happy “You are terrible, were you even listening?” He asked loudly.

“Yeah! I was, I promise!” She quickly tried to reassure him, he looked unconvinced “These clusters should be infertile and unable to produce any more stars but when the clusters collapse because of the gravity in that small volume of space, which, surely has a lot to do with their magnetic—“

“Yeah, yeah, stupid magnetic fields, I got it” He chuckled rolling his eyes “Alright, you were listening, sorry for doubting you.”

“You better be” Victoria raised her head triumphantly “How could you think I would be so irresponsible, I bring you into my home, offer you cookies and hot chocolate and yet you assume I have no respect for you!” She dramatically claimed

“Oh come on, I saw you staring at me instead of the screen, not like I don’t like the attention though, and _Alfred_ offered me cookies” Wally smiled and leaned down to kiss her forehead.

She sighed happily at the feeling of his chapped lips and before he could separate from her she reached out for his hands and took them in hers, Wally caught up into her fingers exploring his palms and remained close.

They were quiet for a couple of moments before Wally leaned back with a sigh “Enough physics.” He said and reached down, the office chair rolling back slightly as he lifted his girlfriend up and walked her towards the couch.

She smiled and leaned into him as he sat down with her in arms.

“You’re like a magnetic field,” He told her after a moment of thinking, Victoria looked up to catch Wally already looking down at her, exploring his words as he stared at her like he was looking for an answer, he cleared his throat

“I don’t always understand you, I have no idea what you’re thinking half the time, even though you are something I should for the most part understand, it seems so simple, and then you baffle me completely by doing something I think impossible: you make me like you even more. The difference is that I don’t want to _stop_ talking about you.” He grinned

“Also, electromagnetic forces outstrip gravitational forces in strength by a huge factor, and babe, I don’t gravitate to you, I am completely stuck on you.” He finished while running a hand through her hair.

“That was the most beautiful nerd-fact slash compliment I have heard” Victoria grinned up at Wally fascinated and kissed him, he chuckled leaning down so she could reach better.

Once the kiss was over though, Wally yelped in surprise feeling as Victoria’s fingers reached his sides “No, wait, don— Hahaha! STOP” He panicked, trying to get the girl off him, but she was relentless.

Victoria laughed with a terrible grin Wally knew too well, the grin she used whenever she was about to wreck you up, and darn it; Wally was ticklish.

He knew there was no fair way out of her grasp, so within a blink of her eyes she was soon the one being pinned as Wally rushed, he grinned down at her for a moment as she took a grasp on the change of situation. Her eyes widened frightened.

“Walls, I’m sorry.”

“It’s too late for apologies, gorgeous” His grin widened as he reached down to her armpits making her burst out into yells and laughter.

He continued his attack with her trying to apologize all the while “Was it worth it, Vic?” He asked in between laughs as his fingers reached down to her belly.

“You know wh-aaa-at? It was!” She managed to say between her crazy laughter only making things worse for herself. Finally, she succumbed, unable to endure the torture much longer, “Alright! I-it wasn’t! Wally! Ple-e-ease!”

Finally, Wally laughed triumphantly and stopped, they both took deep breaths to relax from all the laughter, Wally rested half his weight on top of her, too tired to move from where they were resting as he gave her a warm smile.

She grinned back at him, catching onto how bright his eyes were, he was so happy.

She was about to try and lean down to kiss him when he started speaking, strange words she had a hard time processing made their way to her ears over his dreamy gaze “ _I love you so much._ ”


	2. Magnetism or Gravity?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnetism is much stronger than gravity, and yet both forces are really strong so while investigating the cosmos it isn't always as easy to tell which one you are engaging with.

Do you ever get this feeling? It’s like that very moment in which you realize the rain is pouring down vigorously but you forgot your umbrella at home, and you have a lot of things in your hands that will get damaged if you venture out. Just, a whole lot stronger than that.

Like the moment right after you lost your footing on the staircase, the moment between the trip and the reaching out to protect yourself, for less than a couple of seconds where you hold your breath as you start to process exactly how you’re going to get hurt but don’t completely comprehend it yet.

Victoria felt precisely that; it wasn’t happening in slow-motion to her, it was happening too fast. In fact, the moment in between his words and her response, a response that somehow couldn’t come soon enough, was a moment she could barely grasp.

But while she was processing it: Wally; the fastest boy alive, was, in fact, experiencing it differently, for him this was going in slow-motion. He’d said it, blurted it out at the moment it felt most pure to him, that’s what he was used to, words flying too fast past his lips before having wholly been processed, but this time he kind of wanted to take it back.

If she hadn't been so lost in her thoughts, then Victoria would probably have realized the changes in Wally's stance.

How his eyes had widened the slightest bit, how his breathing had stopped for just a moment and then gotten a little erratic as if he was trying to regain a good amount of lost air but as discreetly as possible. They should have been evident since he was still on top of her, but it happened too fast.

Those intense moments of freaking out seemed less severe when you realize they had lasted much less than a couple of seconds, no more, soon she had managed somehow to get a slight grip on reality.

“I truly adore you” She had said, a waver inflicted with nervousness seeping into her words, but she leaned over and sweetly kissed Wally’s lips to cover it up, for his sake or hers? She didn't think she was entirely sure which.

Fortunately, Wally had been preoccupied enough with his thoughts to notice the waver, to ignore how her eyes had been quickly changing colors as she spoke, his green ones fluttered close as he drowned in the kiss to calm down his worried state.

This was enough reassurance, he convinced himself, and that’s what he wanted to take from her kiss: All that she felt for him, every sweet moment of having her pull him down to deepen what had become a make-out session, the familiar sensation of her fingers running against his scalp and messing his hair, the love.

He pushed strongly the exchange of words they had to the back of his mind, an unimportant worry.

«•••»

She could almost make herself believe it hadn’t happened at all, that it had been her wild imagination playing a game on her, but once she remembered the moment it was too vivid for her to dismiss it.

But that is if she was reminded of it, which hadn’t often happened, after that day things had been just the same, their dates, their missions, their interactions. Wally hadn’t repeated it; he seemed more than comfortable enough slipping back into their regular schedules just as bright as always.

One of these days though, they had a seriously unexpected mission.

Okaara was a far-away planet in which the team had ended up meeting an alien race called “The Psions.” They were currently trying to stop them from starting a war against the Okaaran’s when their strange companion --The one who had sought their help in the first place--, explained the leader of the aliens they were trying to stop was the child of a powerful alien, a being of pure energy that was worshipped as a god by the Okaaran’s.

Was that a reasonable explanation? Because Wally was still processing things and he was currently experiencing the situation.

“Mother?” Kid Flash had asked, completely baffled at the words of their companion “X’hal’s his mother?”

“Is something wrong little one?” Their substantial new friend asked, KF shook his head.

“Yeah. I just realized we’re not in Kansas anymore. I’m stunned.”

“And your little dog Toto too” Robin followed along on a Wizard of Oz reference.

 _“Anything sound familiar Vixen?”_ Aqualad had asked her through the link while he watched the perimeter from a different place

 _“Some details”_ She explained, _“I wasn’t expecting to experience this moment at all though.”_

 _“How so?”_ Rocket’s curious voice piped in

 _“It’s complicated”_ Vixen attempted _“This event had happened with a different team, one that doesn’t exist on this timeline, so I didn’t think it would occur.”_

She cut down further questions for it was dangerous.

It was until after the bizarre adventure had ended that the words she hadn’t expected to have any repercussions came back to bite her from behind.

“Now that it’s passed, what team had to deal with this before us?” Wally asked her leaning back on the couch back at Mount Justice “And did they deal with this as well as we did?”

She considered the question for a moment before deeming it safe to answer “This team was called the Teen Titans” She explained, “It was the most important team of teenagers fighting evil without the League, you and Robin were two of the original members.”

Wally's expression encouraged to continue through the explanation; he was excited to hear about everything he could get from her about those different worlds. She was happy to oblige.

“I feel like we got the short end of the stick” He complained, “We could be fighting without the League babysitting us, what happened differently between the formation of this team and that one?”

“Many things are different, but I wouldn’t complain, Wally, I feel like this timeline is much less dark.”

His eyes widened in realization “We're living the life.” He convinced himself.

“You’ve already seen terrible things happen Walls” She tried, leaning against him “But I guess one of the things I like so much about you is how much of an optimist you are” a grin spread across her face and Wally smiled while running his fingers along her hair.

He leaned down to kiss the crown of her head “I love you too” He whispered happily.

That was until he noticed her stiffen, she had paused there, and he opened his eyes to observe her carefully before she leaned back and hummed in agreement.

That was when he realized what exactly he had said, and the worry he had pushed to the back of his mind started growing at the realization that he had no reason to use the word “too” on that sentence.

Because she had never said it back.


	3. Can't act like it didn't happen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After his realization Wally tries hard to obtain an answer out of her, but from her evasiveness Grodd gets material to torture the young boy with.

After that day she couldn’t make herself believe it hadn’t happened at all, she couldn’t stop remembering the moment in which he had told her how he felt about her, it was too vivid, but the memory of herself avoiding an actual response and the guilt over it was more so.

“I got these for us, so it’s too late to warn me if you have patrol that night” Wally said as he presented her with tickets to a movie she had been waiting to see “I know you forgot, so Dick helped me out to get them, premiere day because I know you don’t want spoilers” He winked.

She jumped up to hug him happily “You’re the best boyfriend Walls, I can’t believe you still want to see it after all my ranting over it.”

“Come on; you just got me excited, I love listening as you speak about the things you like” He responded, “And that's why you love me.”

She kept a stiff smile in place, hoping he wouldn’t notice it she leaned over to peck his lips before taking the tickets and rushing to read the time for the function.

Thus she missed out on the frown forming up on Wally’s face.

«•••»

She waved up at Wally when she saw him come out of school along with everyone else; he received her with a big grin “What kept you?” She asked after greeting him with a kiss on his cheek and then offering him a paper bag “I got you three burgers from Hardee’s.”

“You’re an angel” He smiled wide while taking the bag on his hands “I was starving!”

“I know, you texted me” She rolled her eyes at him, grin still in place.

“Sweet! They’re huge!” He exclaimed taking one out of the bag and out of its package with her help, it was pretty much oozing with mustard and ketchup, the burger itself seemed like it was trying really hard to keep everything inside.

“Of course they are, I know you” She chuckled “I’m the best girlfriend.”

“Yes, you are” He mumbled taking his first bite, soon though, the burger was gone “Gosh, I love you so much” He called in bliss, already taking out the next one.

There was no answer. When he looked up, Victoria had disappeared to take the paper from the burger to a trash can.

«•••»

“Get your disgusting paws off her Grodd!” The big gorilla who had been restraining Vixen was tossed aside by a tackle at super speed from the young speedster “You Ok?” Wally asked her without removing his sight from Grodd who was standing up.

“Yeah” She quickly answered reaching up for her strained neck.

“Good” Kid Flash had disappeared in a blur to hit the angry telepathic gorilla again, he hadn't stopped for anything today.

Flash had informed the team about Grodd leaving Gorilla city and attacking both him and Kid Flash, so they had all ended up in Central city to help while Flash tried to get him captured.

Kid Flash though had seemed in a terrible mood since they had gotten there, he had only hummed in agreement a couple of times through the mind-link besides what he said just now while saving her.

 _“Ugh”_ M'gann complained through the mind-link and Vixen held her head to the beginnings of a painful throbbing that she could feel from her Martian friend.

 _“M'gann!”_ Conner called in worry _“What's wrong?”_

 _“It's Wally”_ She informed painstakingly _“Grodd must have been attacking him telepathically all this time! If he goes through much more strain—“_

 _“Get me out of the link M'gann”_ His voice was heard by everyone, but it took a moment of shock to realize that it was KF who had said so _“M'gann, get out of my head”_ He harshly barked.

M'gann let go of him, also getting rid of the pain he was transmitting, Vixen wanted to complain, but Robin stopped her.

_“If KF were still connected through the link it would be holding us all back; we need to distract Grodd from attacking him.”_

Eventually, they managed to finish the terrible fight until Flash was able to capture the primate, they were all bruised, some maintained awful headaches, but KF was the worst for wear.

_“Wally, are you-“_

_“I told you to get out of my mind M'gann”_ He growled.

His voice had been pulled away from the link once again, and he didn't talk with anyone before they went back to the bioship. Vixen followed his glare to the Gorilla being restrained; she was surprised to find that Grodd was grinning at KF as if he had won against him anyway.

Once they got to the cave she tried to get a word with Kid Flash, but Batman held her back, he wanted to talk about how she needed to get her mind in the game, a speech that felt too familiar, but even then, she kept staring as Kid Flash and Robin disappeared together through another hallway.

“Vixen” Her mentor called her sternly, and she looked at him surprised, worry etched her features before she offered him a weak apologetic look, Batman sighed “I suggest you fix and confront whatever problem's holding you back; otherwise I'll have to keep you off the team.”

She looked at Batman worried, eyes open wide “For how long?” she dumbly asked.

“As long as it might take” He assured before walking away.

Vixen sighed, the man knew what he was doing, he knew her well enough to know that this would finally push her to confront her problems.

He had been waiting for that excuse, waiting for her to slip up so he could threaten her to deal with whatever it was she had to. Honestly, that was smart. Because if it had depended on her, she didn't think she'd ever be ready to do confront it.

For now, though, she needed to find out what was wrong with Wally.

When she was about to cross the hallway she had seen both boys disappear through Robin collided with her, he grunted, looking rather bothered “Sorry” he mumbled ungently.

“What happened?” She asked worried receiving a grunt from him.

“I don't actually know, he obviously doesn't want to talk about it though if the fight we just had is anything to go by.”

She was surprised “You fought?”

“It wasn't that bad” Robin admitted with a sigh “But I'm not dealing with his attitude _right now_ , good luck.”

She hummed as the boy disappeared to the zeta beam. If Wally had been so mad at Rob for asking about whatever had been bothering him so much in the first place, then he probably didn't want to deal with her questioning either.

She sighed, she could at least make him company, right?

«•••»

She found him staring at his new souvenir; it was the helmet Grodd had used to make his influence stronger, Wally had stolen it from him, most of the team hadn't been as close during combat to do so, Wally had seemed to make sure of it.

“You want to talk about it?” She asked gently, but he had tensed up and shook his head slightly, still not turning to look at her

Victoria removed her cowl, walking over to the sofa in the room to wait with him, hoping he'd be ready to talk about it soon.

Wally finally looked back at her; quietly he ended up making his way beside her, plopping down to sit with a sigh. It was quiet for a bit after that.

He chuckled humorlessly “I just yelled at Rob because he wanted to help me out” He started “And before that I chewed out M'gann for the same thing, trying to help me out. So I’m glad you just decided to sit here quietly, I probably would have been terrible to you if you had started asking questions too.”

Victoria looked at him, humming softly to show she was listening, she extended her hand towards him, offering it and soon he took it with his, just resting them together.

“I hate fighting Grodd specially” He continued “He gets in your head and finds out those things you don’t like about yourself or have trouble dealing with, then he shows you how bad things are in your mind, shows you what you really don’t like to see, erases all the good and makes you concentrate on what's wrong, what you subconsciously think is true but don’t want to admit out loud” He glared at the floor.

Her grip on his hand tightened a little, but when she tried to get closer to him Wally seemed to panic, he let go of her hand and scooted a little further away, leaving her frozen, he wouldn’t look at her anymore.

“You can’t bottle up these things Wally, you don’t have to talk about it right now but I don’t want to see you hurt, I can help” She tried to reassure him, Wally smiled down and shook his head, troubled but amused.

“I love you,” He said again still looking down and then took a shuddering breath before covering his face with his hands “Gosh, I really do” He mumbled.

Victoria froze again in her place, unsure of how to answer, he glanced at her and started chuckling humorlessly still.

He didn’t expect an answer, but this time it was hurting him more than the last couple of times he had tried for one, how much longer would he be able to stand the fact that whenever he told Victoria how he honestly felt for her, she went cold, rigid, fake?

“That’s what he used against me” He admitted, glancing at her sideways with his face still on his hands “All those reactions whenever I’d tell you, reminded me of how I always waited for an answer, how I hoped that this time was it, that you might just say it back”

He was exhausted, before the initial panic of having messed up the first times he'd said it he had convinced himself that he was just overthinking, it was the truth that needed to be said and she probably just needed a little more time to actually think this through, but of course as time went by that seemed unlikely, she would have already organized her thoughts if that was it, wouldn't she?

His hands went up to his hair “I can’t keep acting like it doesn’t hurt me whenever you avoid answering, I need an answer Victoria, I need closure, it’s just not enough anymore” He looked up at her tiredly, calmly, just wanting this over with.

Victoria started shaking her head vigorously, how could she have done this to him? Why was she so selfish? Why was she such a coward? “No, no, I can't-“

Wally was getting a little angry “You can't what? Victoria, you can’t leave me like this again, I can’t stand this, just— say you don’t, I won’t be mad, but I _need_ you to.”

“It's not that” She stumbled out on her words and Wally shut up “I was just terrified” She admitted

Terrified, what had he done to get her so scared? Tell her he loved her? He went back to the memories of Grodd, everything that could go wrong after this moment, he’d lose her, he didn’t think he would be able to look her in the eye, oh no, what if she wanted to break up before but didn’t want those things to happen—

“I was scared that you didn’t really love me.”

Okay, that answer was the most idiotic thing, he was about to strangle someone “Are you _kidding_ me?”

“We are young! We are meant to do a lot of stupid things! All that talk about gravitational forces, I was scared that maybe you were just mistaken, maybe you thought you loved me but didn’t really, maybe you just gravitated towards me, maybe I am not a magnetic field, maybe you are, and you don't understand it,

Maybe your _‘I love you’s_ wouldn’t be as meaningful as mine and I was scared about loving you more than you actually loved me” She was rambling “After the first time you’d said it I thought it was probably just a fluke, perhaps it had slipped your lips and you just didn’t know how to take it back

Then the second time I started panicking and things went downhill from there; I kept thinking you’d eventually realize you were wrong and saying it back would be my downfall, would make things real, would make the heartache worse.”

"Vic" Wally tried to stop her from continuing this distressed rant "Beautiful, that's so stupid, I've known I love you for a while now. Why were you keeping this? I've been repeating how I felt for weeks.” Wally looked at her in worry.

“I know” She sobbed “But I also had no idea it affected you this much, I thought eventually you’d realize if it was true or not and that I should just wait and find out.”

He reached out for her enveloping her in a tight hug in which she broke down, they remained like this for a bit, taking comfort on the other for the messy cluster of disaster they had snowballed into.

Victoria separated between both of them giving out shuddering breaths; Wally blinked rapidly to look at her, they stared at each other, wondering who would be speaking first.

“This is so stupid” Wally complained after huffing out a small laugh “You are _so_ stupid, isn’t it too darn obvious I am in love with you?”

“Isn’t it obvious I am seriously and honestly in love with you too?” She countered, and he had just lost his breath after what he had hoped for all along finally relieved him from so much stress “I really am, I’m sorry, but you are stupid, we are just too dumb.”

“We are both blind” He laughed "Don't feel too safe right now though, once I've processed this I'll be pretty mad at you."

"I better make sure Bruce can't find his credit card anytime soon then."

They smiled at each other, their smiles eventually growing until they were laughing at each other for the wreck they had placed themselves into.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”


End file.
